Jamila Medley

For over a decade, Jamila Medley has leveraged experience working within the solidarity economy and racial justice movements to support organizations committed to transformational change.  With a background in organizational development she brings facilitation expertise and thought partnership to highly participatory processes related to governance, strategic planning, resource generation, research, leadership development, project management, and more.  As a resource mobilizer, many of Jamila’s efforts – including her stewardship of The Partnership Fund’s Collective Courage Fund, service as board chair of the Independence Public Media Foundation, and co-leadership within Securing Roots –  demonstrate her advocacy of and strengths as a practitioner of  trust-based philanthropy principles.  Her commitment to solidarity economy building has afforded her opportunities to be a collaborator in projects like Solidarity Resource, the Solidarity Economy Principles Project, Columinate’s Co-op Cafe and to serve on the board of directors for the Food Co-op Initiative.

From 2012-2021, Jamila served in governance roles and then as executive director of the Philadelphia Area Cooperative Alliance (PACA). There, she partnered with cooperators, elected officials, movement organizers, and funders to position cooperatively-owned enterprises as a robust and equitable economic development solution to economic and racial injustice in the Philadelphia region.

Jamila holds a M.S. degree in Organizational Dynamics from the University of Pennsylvania and earned her B.A. degree in Urban Studies from Connecticut College.  She is the founder of the Black Women at Home Project which visibilizes the ways in which Black women embody, make meaning of, and celebrate home.